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What nobody tells you about the leap of faith

is all the rage in coaching and entrepreneurial work. But there's a rather important matter in the process that most people don't mention up front.

When you're in mid-air and there's no net and your landing ground is nowhere close, you have to engage an entirely new degree of faith. This level of faith may be as new as the ground you are aiming for.

What nobody tells you is that you're going to have to find and engage an entirely new level of faith to call on not once, not twice, but over and over again.

“It's not so much that we're afraid of change or so in love with the old ways, but it's that place in between that we fear . . . . It's like being between trapezes. It's Linus when his blanket is in the dryer. There's nothing to hold on to.”
— Marilyn Ferguson

What if you don't reach the other side?

What if your wings don't work or your parachute doesn't open or your hands don't grasp the trapeze bar or...

I don't like being in-between. I like to know what I am doing, where I'm going and feel my hooks securely in that thing. I like to plan, take action and accomplish.

Of course, this is not how life works. Life, learning and creative activities unfold in their own time, at their own pace.

When I find myself in the in-between I remember that I am moving through Bardo.

The Tibetan word Bardo describes the state between death and rebirth. The "in-between state." The Bardo Thodol, known in English as the Tibetan Book of the Dead, defines six kinds of Bardo. Three are associated with life: The bardo of birth, the bardo of dreams and the bardo of meditation.

In simplest terms, birth signals the state of life (in-between death), dreams the state in-between waking and sleeping, and meditation the state in-between the incessant stream of thoughts.

The Bardo Thodol translates as "Liberation through Hearing in the Intermediate State." That's a description you have to mull over.

Here's the thing. If you frame your phase of uncertainty (whatever your journey may be) in terms of Bardo, you may rest assured that you will always reach the other side, your destiny.

Your phase of uncertainty may not be easy or fun but you can remove at least one aspect of fear from the equation. You'll always get to the other side. It's a given because you're only in-between.

I'm getting used to it. You?

“What is an artist? A provincial who finds himself somewhere between a physical reality and a metaphysical one.... It’s this in-between that I’m calling a province, this frontier country between the tangible world and the intangible one—which is really the realm of the artist.”
— Federico Fellini